Urban landscape can be drab and featureless - but not when artists are spicing it up with spectacular wall paintings, as shown in this article. Some murals can be considered realistic illusions, some have educational and historical meaning, some can be labeled as "kitsch", but all of them are welcome splashes of color and creativity in the city's day-to-day life.

Here is an artist who really breaks the monotonous geometry of official buildings, parking lots, and shopping malls, with his own marvelous perspective and 3D illusions. Eric Grohe has an impressive array of projects on his site, check them out.

Bucyrus Area Community Foundation, Ohio:

Here is how he makes an endless wall of the shopping mall actually... attractive:

What you've just seen is not in any way three-dimensional, it's all a trick, an illusion... Here are some places (walls) on which this wonder unfolds: a sidewalk in Sarasota County Health Center, Florida... all-too-realistic wave in a sidewalk in Honolulu, Hawaii...the 'earthquake' wall on Main Street of Los Gatos, California, was created following a real earthquake there in 1989...

Gaudy but impressive colors of the Ramenskoe apartment district in Moscow:

Is this the utmost in urban psychedelics? The whole apartment complex painted in unbelievably bright colors... Looks interesting enough, but how would it feel to live in the middle of a paint explosion or a rainbow gone nuts?

Now... how about some fun in the ghetto? This was exactly the mission of two Dutch painters Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn - to go to the poorest section of Rio de Janeiro favelas (slums) and paint it in the cheerful way, with active participation of people who live there:

This post will be the first installment in a series. Please send us the photos of cool murals you spotted around the world, and we'll make up the second part from your submissions (send it to "Suggest a link" email). Good hunting!

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14 Comments:

"Even creepier is this mural (location unknown):" I think it was located in Murcia Spain in "Castillejo" neighbourhood but the building was demolished.This one I think it is from the same artist and located in Juan Carlos I avenue, Murcia Spain.http://www.panoramio.com/photo/23627494

Después de ver todo esto, quien puede pensar todavía que la pintura ha muerto?Larga vida al arte!Larga vida al color!/After seen all this, who can think painting has dead?Long life to the art!Long life to the colours!